Israeli air strikes supported by media campaign

Steven Erlanger

Beit Lahia, Gaza Strip: As Israel's air war against militants in Gaza entered its sixth day, Israeli forces bombed a mosque, which it said aerial photos indicated was harbouring a weapons cache, and a centre for the disabled, killing two residents and wounding three as well as a caretaker.

A separate strike on the house of a police commander killed at least 18 people, the highest toll so far in this conflict, bringing the total number of dead to at least 140, Palestinian officials said.

In response, Hamas fired a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv, Israel's largest city, garnering much attention despite causing no deaths or injuries, as three of them were intercepted.

There were also signs of imminent escalation as the Israeli military said it was going to send messages to northern Gaza residents to vacate their homes "for their own safety", amid preparations for a possible ground invasion.

The Interior Ministry in Gaza urged Palestinians to ignore the warnings, calling them psychological warfare.

The Israeli bombing of the centre for the disabled, the Mabaret Palestine Society in northern Gaza, occurred just before dawn. Because it was the weekend, only five of the 19 severely disabled residents were at the center, while the rest were with their families, said Jamila Elaiwa, who founded the centre 20 years ago.

Advertisement

She spoke at Shifa hospital's burns unit while she was visiting the wounded, including Mai Hamada, 30, and Salwa Abu al-Qomssan, 53, the caretaker, both of them with severe burns. Two more residents were in intensive care. The dead were identified as Ula Wisha, 31, and Suha Abusada, 39, whose family said she had been born severely disabled and unable to speak.

Muhammad Abu al-Qomssan, 32, the caretaker's eldest son, said that his mother felt fortunate to have found this new job only three weeks ago. She had been to predawn prayers and told him she had arrived only a few minutes before the bomb struck.

Ms Elaiwa, 59, said that her centre was well known in the neighborhood and that it had been in the same building for almost a decade. She said she had no idea why it would be bombed. "No one lived there except us," she said. "There was no one else in the building."

Neighbour Yasir Abu Shoodq said, and Ms Elaiwa confirmed, that there had first been a warning rocket, "a knock on the roof", a few minutes before the missile hit. "But no one understood what it meant," she said. "No one could imagine the centre would be a target for anyone." In any case, she said, the severity of the residents' disabilities would have prevented them from fleeing on their own.

Azzedin Ali, 26, another neighbour, said angrily: "They are bankrupt of targets and of pity. What would the handicapped have been resisting? This is the enemy striking civilians in the places they think they are safe."

In a rare Saturday briefing for reporters at Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv, a senior military official said, when asked, that the army was looking into what happened at the centre for the disabled. "A group is investigating now what was the target, what was the intelligence," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official spoke of the difficulties the air force faced in minimising collateral damage in the densely populated environment of Gaza, and showed video clips from the air that he said demonstrated the military's care in targeting.

"Hamas' operational infrastructure is not in specific military camps or posts," he said.

At the mosque that was bombed on Saturday, in the Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, only the minaret was left standing. Young men joined the junior imam, Muhammad Hamad, 25, in digging through the rubble to save copies of the Koran and other religious works.

Here Israeli intelligence was convinced, and issued photographs to support its case, that the mosque also served as "a Hamas rocket cache and a gathering point for militants," said the army's official spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner.

Mr Hamad denied categorically that any weapons had been in the mosque, but it was impossible for an untrained eye to tell, in part because it was considered too dangerous to try to enter the collapsed structure. "That charge is baseless," he said. "This is the house of God."

Neighbours said that there had been a "knock on the roof", followed by the bomb a few minutes later, and that only four people were wounded because it was too early for the predawn Ramadan prayers.

Mr Hamad said he had found a Koran open to a page with a particular sura that he felt had special meaning. "Victory is imminent for those who remain steadfast," he read.

The difficulties for Hamas and its allies in Gaza were also on display Saturday as they fired at least 90 rockets at Israel, causing no deaths or injuries, two of them even falling into the occupied West Bank towns of Hebron and Bethlehem.

In its most audacious attack yet, the military wing of Hamas announced at 8pm that it would fire rockets at Tel Aviv an hour later. The news set off a flurry of air-raid sirens and people running to bomb shelters but the rockets caused no injuries or damage, according to initial reports.

The only Israeli who has died thus far was a woman in Haifa who had a heart attack while running to a shelter.

A rocket struck a house in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Friday night, destroying it and injuring an elderly woman. A man was severely wounded Friday and seven others suffered less serious wounds when a rocket hit a petrol station in Ashdod, an Israeli port city, setting it ablaze.